Seyed Mohammad Amin Mahdian - Pharmaceutical Nanotechnology, Department of Pharmaceutical Nanotechnology, Faculty of Pharmacy, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Teharn, Iran
Zahra Azizi - Department of Molecular Medicine, School of Advanced Technologies in Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

Introduction Recently, circulating tumor cells (CTCs) detection using a liquid biopsy have received much attention for cancer management including predicting cancer prognosis, evaluating tumor progression, screening personalized anti-cancer drug, the evaluation of treatment efficacy, and elucidating biology mechanism of tumor metastasis. Methods The microfluidic devices fall into two general groups: affinity-based and physical-based separation. The former method is based on the specific interactions between surface markers of CTCs (e.g.; epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM) and capture ligands (e.g.; antibodies). The latter method relies on physical properties of CTCs like cell density or cell size. Results In spite of improved CTCs isolation, physical-based methods still suffer from limitations associated with tumor cells heterogeneity and contamination with WBCs give rise to low efficiency and purity. The evidence suggests that affinity-based isolation provides a promising platform for isolation of CTCs with higher efficiency and purity. Conclusion Microfluidic chips have paved the way for identifying and sorting rare cells, mainly due to advantages like laminar flow, very small samples and reagents consumption, reduced analysis time, and cost–effectiveness analyses. Interestingly, making use of microfluidic devices not only give rise to a significant increase in sensitivity and efficiency of capturing rare cells from whole blood, but also provide an optimal platform for gentle capturing them as viable CTCs, thereby allowing further investigations using cellular techniques

Microfluidic system, Circulating tumor cells, Isolation